Ghazal Over Waves
North we go. North by fishing boat, by plane, by truck, by hot air balloon. Look down at the waves.
Blue-violet North of shorter wavelengths, shorter attention span––call out / call out & wave.
M the monocle that is the sun, M the shape of waves, migrations, M of movement in miles of mothers of
ancestral mitochondria, M Maria leaving el Malecón, mascara running in waves.
My parents take bad photographs. The subject is too far or the mouth in mid-sentence. Wrong instant.
This one was overexposed, someone laughing, wide-mouthed laughter coming out in white waves.
My mother & father make a kind of janusface, she opens to the future grasses future
kisses & cocktails & opera glasses & evenings of buying furniture, tinsel waves
for the tree over here / he looks back over there, the over-there flutes, Palestine, over-there honey—
In learning about the handpicked sweeter more wild more clean older
more sacred there of exiles, I was learning to love the back of his head, salt & pepper waves.
Bread was Wonder or rye, pan cubano or flat khubez. Water was miyah, mine, un vaso de agua.
Hunger & thirst, hunger & thirst, what game will you play through your hunger & thirst—in the wrecking wave.
A round cookie-tin now holds thimbles, needles, thread. Pick one up, it smells like sugar.
Flying over el Caribe the sea’s a quilt—drab chlorophyll honeydew islam green in warping waves.
Amberplastic pill bottles of holy water / Coconut rolled through the apartment collecting all bad
intent. I’m assembling the animal memory: hide of sheep, moth wings, organ pumping wine-dark waves.
Listen, the low-sound of her drawing the sign of the cross on her heels with a piece of azul.
Her heels click-click like typewriters, socks stamped blue, as she walks through el Malecón in a Manhattan heatwave.
It’s bad luck to stir soup with a fork; you’ll lose money with your purse on the floor; a dream of clothes
means death; don’t bring seashells in the house–––they bring in the sea–––they’ll pummel & pummel you anew in waves.
M para mar y mama, M Maria, Miriam, mija, M the middle age / middle sister, Marume is my most
intimate name, my marsupial my morbid herb o my I am so sick of beauty a morning sickness in waves.